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November 17, 2007

Jeff Wetherby Gone

From the Detroit Free Press -

The Tigers hired Jeff Wetherby as a major league scout. He replaces Greg Smith, who left the club to become the scouting director for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

And, from MLN-The Raw Feed -

The Detroit Tigers today announced Jeff Wetherby has been named as a major league scout, replacing Greg Smith, who was recently named as the scouting director of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Wetherby joins the Tigers after spending the previous four seasons as professional scout with the New York Yankees. Prior to joining the Yankees in 2004, Wetherby served as a major league scout with the Tigers in 2002 and 2003. He originally joined the Tigers as an area scout in Florida in 1996, before being named southeast region supervisor in 1998. Wetherby began his scouting career as an area scout with the San Diego Padres from 1993-1995.

What is it with the Yankees and firing advance scouts the last few years? If Wetherby was a cog in advance scouting, at the big league level, since 2004...well, then, I'm not sad to see him go. While I can't point to something specific, I've always had this feeling that the Yankees were lacking in terms of having a freshly derived game plan on how to attack opponent's present weaknesses and avoid their live hot spots.

I know that Wetherby was up for the Pirates scouting director job too before deciding to go to the Tigers. So, maybe I'm wrong on him - and he's a good scout? Again, this is all a gut feel thing for me on this situation.

What do you think?

Posted by Steve Lombardi at November 17, 2007 01:21 PM

Comments

Steve, your gut feeling is correct. A couple of things: absurd budget consciousness purged the core of advance scouts who prepared the team extremely well in the late '90s (which included former Yankees non-prospect Jeff Johnson of all people)and Gene Michael's receding from view as the "super scout" through which all the advance information was sifted and refined (due to both FO politics and ill health). The good news is that Gene is back to some semblance of his former authority within the organization. Now, if we can find some good advance men...

Posted by: JohnnyC [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 17, 2007 07:06 PM

I've always had this feeling that the Yankees were lacking in terms of having a freshly derived game plan on how to attack opponent's present weaknesses and avoid their live hot spots.
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Pretty tough to do in a game like baseball.

Posted by: Raf [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 18, 2007 11:05 AM